creation

By chance, while in Scotland I picked up a copy of David Bartholomew’s book God, Chance and Purpose: Can God Have It Both Ways? It offers a wonderful look at the role of chance in science for people interested in science and theology.

I love living in a big city: the energy, the pace, the sirens. I love being able to walk or ride a bus to work, or catch a train to the airport. I love crowded sidewalks, tourists craning their necks to see skyscrapers, businesspeople with briefcases and iPods weaving their way through the maze of shoppers and lookers and dawdlers conferring over city maps.

A top panel of U.S. scientists has published a new book asserting that religious faith and belief in the theory of evolution “can be fully compatible” and that creationism has no place in science classes.

Because I am a biologist, evolution is at the core of virtually everything I think about. Like most of my colleagues, I’ve kept an eye on the emerging “intelligent design” movement. Unlike most of my colleagues, however, I don’t see ID as a threat to biology, public education or the ideals of the republic.

The notion of intelligent design in nature is not controversial among Christians. “The heavens proclaim the glory of God,” the psalmist exclaims, and worshipers regularly confess their belief in God “the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” St.

There are 3,700 known species of cockroaches alone, and they will outlive us all. This statistic ought to disturb literalists who recall that Noah’s family caught and brought on the ark “of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female” (Gen. 6:8). Noah also had to avoid the hazardous secretions of these creatures, some of which produce repugnatorial secretions containing compounds that generate hydrogen cyanide.

I recall that we used to sing “This Is My Father’s World” at the beginning of Sunday school sessions, and we would sing it every evening at church camp as we sat on the hard wooden benches. I haven’t chosen that hymn for worship for many years because I know how important it has been to move beyond masculine images in theology and liturgy.

Few scientists have been as influential and controversial as Charles Darwin. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection not only reinvented modern biology in all its branches but also rocked theology and religion in ways that resound to this day.

Stegosaurus is a dinosaur renowned for the plates that run up and down its back. When we look at its fossilized remains today, it is hard to suppress the question of what the plates were for. What function or purpose did they serve?

The scandal unfolding at the Tri-State Crematory in Noble, Georgia, has often been compared to events in a Stephen King novel, complete with decaying corpses and an upstanding citizen unmasked as a monster. Over 300 corpses thought to have been cremated have been discovered scattered across the 16-acre property of Ray Brent Marsh in rural Walker County.